Asia

If you are planning to visit Vietnam, one of the best things you can do, is to get a visa before you start travelling. This can easily be done at the embassay of your home country. However, if like me, you are unsure of what countries you will be visiting and when, sometimes you’ll have to get visas as you go. Prior to going to Vietnam, I was in Thailand...

Aside from my journey to Brunei from Malaysia, I hadn’t done many long journeys of boats. Getting to Laos from Thailand is a relatively simple affair, you can fly in, catch a bus or get the boat. Note: Although this is a border crossing story, you don’t actually cross the border a boat as I once thought, the actual border in on land at Chiang Khong. Cost: From Chiang...

If you are travelling in South East Asia, you’ll see some strange sights; from the family of 5 and their chickens on the back of a scooter, to the family of pigs casually roaming around the café you’re eating at. As well as these strange sights, which are normal to locals, South East Asia is home to some strange tourist attractions, the strangest of which most...

Keeping fit whilst you travel, can be a hard goal to keep up with. Aside from lugging around a rucksack, and doing a lot of walking, that’s about as good as it gets for me. Whilst living in New Zealand, I was quite active, either at the gym or out for a run. However, every now and again, opportunities to keep fit on the road occur. Whilst I was in Chiang Mai, I...

Having a massage on holiday, or whilst travelling appears to be pretty standard. Its relaxing, and often in South East Asian countries, very cheap. Take a stroll along the beaches in Bali, or Thailand and you’re likely to hear “massage .. lady, you want massage?” repeatedly. I have yet to entertain the idea of having a massage by the beach. I did...

So, I am no Steve Irwin, and you certainly won’t find me campaigning for animal rights. However, I do like animals, and I am not keen on them being mistreated. Unfortunately, when you visit South East Asia, and possibly other parts of the World; animals are commonly used for tourism purposes, and are often not treated well, but many tourists fail to look or...

I love food, and could happily graze all day. If you have met me, I will have probably told you that I eat like a baby Dinosaur. I often think about what I’ll have for breakfast as I go to bed. That’s how into food I am. As well as eating food, I love to cook, bake and experiment. As approached my 8th week of travelling in South East Asia, I realised that...

Every now and again on my travels, I like to do something more active, as apart from carrying my rucksack around, and walking a lot, I am doing relatively little physical activity. I used to be a fairly regular member of a gym in New Zealand, and ran a fair bit at times. So getting out and being fit is important to me. During my first day in Thailand, I saw an advert...

During my time in Georgetown Penang, I decided to take a bit of a different route than my original one. Flying to Japan was expensive, and it is expensive to travel there. My plan was to stay one week, but I figured with all those factors against my budget, I’d save Japan for a bigger trip. The next logical move appeared to be to head north to Thailand. After a...

It wasn’t in ‘the plan’ to visit Georgetown in Malaysia, nor had it been ‘the plan’ to stay in Malaysia longer than a few weeks, but I ended up staying almost one month, as I loved it so much. I’ve soon realised that ‘the plan’ and my original route soon went out the window. The most frequently used phrase in...